I was down for a while, but life goes on. And like the sun and hot weather in Cunen, my cheery disposition has made a comeback. Yes, an inordinate number of my friends here will be gone by the end of the month. But a few more people are staying than I originally thought, and there are now lots of new volunteers consolidated to Quiché to befriend, including my new sitemates who got here this week. Most importantly, for probably the first time in my service, I actually have a lot of work, or at least plans for it. School gardens, cooking classes, nutrition with pregnant women, collaborating with the municipal women’s office, on top of my work with the Save the Children groups, should keep me very busy. And being busy keeps me out of my house, having pity parties with myself. So, there’s that…lol
If you want to keep me from being depressed (or to provide props for my pity party), feel free to send me letters and goodies! I will love you forever :)
Nicole Bohrer
Voluntaria de Cuerpo de Paz
Barrio San Francisco
Cunén, El Quiché
14010
Guatemala, Central America
In other news, last week was a quarterly GAD meeting at the Peace Corps office…where I was elected Coordinator! Not going to lie, I was the only one who wanted it, but the vote was unanimously positive ;) With most of the committee members finishing their service, a bunch of cool new girls were brought on board and I think we’ll be a great group. We’re all excited for our multi-lingual production of the Vagina Monologues next week, in conjunction with a Population Council project in Antigua! I’ll be doing “The Flood” in English (I’m practicing daily!), but most of the monologues will be presented in Spanish by the young women participating in the project Abriendo Oportunidades, with some Mayan languages thrown in as well. Below is the awesome poster for your viewing pleasure :) All this has inspired me to plan an International Women’s day celebration with the Cunen muni for Thursday; the theme is “Empower rural women – End hunger and poverty,” right up my agricultural alley. I’m really excited, I hope it actually works out!
the Vagina Monologues poster
After the GAD meeting, I took advantage of my very last opportunity to visit Whitney in her site…omg her village life is so incredibly different from my life in Cunen, which made it so great to see! I felt like I finally got the real PC experience: sleeping in a wooden room (not a mud hut, sadly), running to the latrine in the rain, taking a bucket bath, cooking over an open fire, and communicating solely in an indigenous language (which I obviously wasn’t doing). I honestly feel like if that was what I’d been assigned to, I could’ve gotten used to it. Nevertheless, I was quite content to take a burning hot shower as soon as I got back to my fancy house!
coloring in Whitney’s house
Now what I’m most looking forward to is Darren’s visit! His plane arrives at the end of Semana Santa and then I will orient my pampered (as if!) brother to the hostels and chicken buses of Guatemala, before heading to the beaches of Belize and Cancun, for literally a hot second. I’ll be sad when he leaves, but Kate and I will somehow recover enough to continue on to Mexico City and San Cristóbal de las Casas, in Chiapas, just over the Guatemalan border. I’m waiting for this month to fly by until then!
the wheat fields I find so beautiful (clearly I’m a city girl) in Los Trigales (trigo = wheat)
